An hour later when school closed, the teacher found Skully sitting on a log, book in hand, studying with one finger acting as monitor to his lips.
The children pretended not to notice and slipped away after their fashion down the mountain paths. Mrs. McIntosh walked with her little daughter, but while Mr. Rowantree watched, he saw McIntosh stride forward, throw his little girl pick-a-back over his shoulder, and lope down the trail behind his wife.
CHAPTER XIII
THE HERMIT THRUSH
Keefe O’Connor had slept for hours, heavily, and Miss Zillah, stealing in every few minutes to look at him, was not well satisfied.
“I’d give anything if we had a good doctor at hand,” she said to the girls. “Rest is a fine thing, of course, but it isn’t always enough. Keefe seems badly in need of stimulation. I don’t believe his heart would have been strained like that, great as the exertion of carrying poor Mr. Panther was, if he hadn’t been run down. Probably he hasn’t been having half enough to eat, for one thing. Cooking for himself the way he has is a bad thing. We ought to have had him in here with us oftener. I blame myself very much. But I hesitated to act, knowing so little of him and being responsible for you two girls.”
In course of time Mrs. McEvoy came over, and she, too, tiptoed into the room to look at the sleeping youth.
“I’ve got medicine for almost everything that can ail a body,” she said when she had joined the others on the porch, “but the trouble is, I don’t know what is the matter with him. He seems clean beat out. Now, if only Mrs. Rowantree was here she might be able to give us some notion of what to do. She reads doctor books so that she can care for her children.”
Azalea snatched at the idea.
“Let’s do have Mrs. Rowantree come,” she said. “Now that Mrs. McEvoy speaks of it, I realize that I’ve been wanting Mary Cecily Rowantree all day.”
“What a queer girl you are, Azalea,” smiled Carin. “Every little while you put on a mysterious look and say something eerie, as if you had been talking with spooks.”